The future of Cheyenne Mountain

A park’s two pathsBy DAVE PHILIPPS, THE GAZETTEApril 15, 2007 - 12:49PMIf you had $3 million to spend on Cheyenne Mountain State Park, what would you buy: (A) 20 campsites and an amphitheater, or (B) Cheyenne Mountain? Before you decide, consider a few details. - The new, 1,680-acre park includes foothills but not the mountain itself. It already has 40 campsites, and studies suggest the vast majority of visitors to our state parks do not stay overnight. - Cheyenne Mountain is worth an estimated $12 million, but the owners are offering a 75 percent discount because they want to preserve land homesteaded almost a century ago by their grandfather. - The deal won’t last much longer. The owners have been negotiating with the state for eight years and “are at the end of their rope,” according to their attorney, P.J. Anderson. “We have a bank loan due Aug. 31,” he said. “That’s the drop-dead deadline. If we don’t have a deal by then, we’ll list it.” Some would say it’s a no-brainer — buy the land, while it’s available, and add campsites later. But this spring, when park officials applied for state grants, they picked the campsites over the mountain.